Well after a lengthy break to refresh and other spring crap, I'm back at it. And the good news is I've had a breakthrough in level 9's route. The problem is that it is heavily dependent on getting a cloak off the first cloak lifter encountered in the lava pit, and it's not entirely uncommon that all 3 of them neglect to drop one.

Times are starting to get considerably better. Once I fully refine the route I should be getting respectable times at last.

I'm making a lot of progress lately. Level 9 is almost where I want it, and now that I've found this route I'm wondering wtf took me so long to find it. Been making some progress in a lot of other levels lately. I want to comment on level 26. The route in that level is pretty obvious, but the problem is that early in the level you get forced to run gauntlet after gauntlet where even if you fly perfectly and do everything right, you get randomly killed by either a missile bot or a fusion hulk.

Since nobody else has posted in this thread for a few months, I just wanna chime in and say at least I'm still following it and looking forward to seeing more of these videos.

Also, I heard recently nvidia started up a project that they are intending to release this summer called "shadowplay" which is basically a video game capture utility built into nvidia's geforce experience driver companion. It'll capture video from any game and write it to the disk for you at a specified framerate/resolution and it does it with next to zero performance impact. Unfortunately it requires running a Kepler based video card (Geforce 600 or 700 series card) because it uses the built in hardware h.264 encoder in Kepler to do the encoding. But if you have, or plan on getting a GF 600 series card, it may make video capturing out of games a whole lot easier and quicker. They are saying it is so fast you will be able to set it as an "always on" recorder that you can use a hotkey to permanently save portions of video out of games you are playing whenever you want.

Krom wrote:Since nobody else has posted in this thread for a few months, I just wanna chime in and say at least I'm still following it and looking forward to seeing more of these videos.

Also, I heard recently nvidia started up a project that they are intending to release this summer called "shadowplay" which is basically a video game capture utility built into nvidia's geforce experience driver companion. It'll capture video from any game and write it to the disk for you at a specified framerate/resolution and it does it with next to zero performance impact. Unfortunately it requires running a Kepler based video card (Geforce 600 or 700 series card) because it uses the built in hardware h.264 encoder in Kepler to do the encoding. But if you have, or plan on getting a GF 600 series card, it may make video capturing out of games a whole lot easier and quicker. They are saying it is so fast you will be able to set it as an "always on" recorder that you can use a hotkey to permanently save portions of video out of games you are playing whenever you want.

Really now? It's getting close to time for me to think about getting a new system to set up anyway. I'll keep this in mind for that.

I should probably rename the thread to something very generic, since I'm trying to do all 30 levels of Descent. And then I might see if I can extend the challenge to Descent 2 and Vertigo. If I do this on Descent 3 it would need to be at a vastly lower difficulty because of the fact that the bots have jedi-like reflexes in any skill level hotshot or above. However I do plan on trying to do all of D3 and Mercenary in a pure speed manner, tho likely segmented in the larger levels or levels requiring much combat or a boss fight (D3 level 3, 4, 6 the dreadnaught one, level 15, the merc space station level, merc level 7). Further, mercenary levels one and two will need to be done on new pilots because once you get the black pyro, that's the ship you use in any level you select from the new game menu.

And I've got level 9's route pretty optimized. All I'm waiting for is that one run where everything goes according to plan. The remaining hitches right now are getting a cloaking device off the first cloaked lifter, getting a cloaking device off of either of the two cloaked lifters in the room where the blue key is, killing the other two cloaked lifters that start in the lava tunnel in a timely manner, and collecting the red key without being interfered with by robots spawned from the matcen near the hostages in that section.

I'm shooting for right around 9 minutes or less with the route I've got in place now. Which is a lot better than the 15+ I was getting before I found this route.

After I get level 9 wrapped up I'm going to focus on level 15, which should not be too terribly hard to get done, since it more or less has a natural route to it. I'm also going to keep chipping away at level 26, which I think will ultimately be one of the most problematic levels in the entire game, simply because of the sheer firepower you are faced with before you get through the blue door. I think after I can get through that door on a regular basis, the rest of the level should not be too hard because of the availability of cloaks and invulns the rest of the way.

The problem is that to eliminate backtracking, the hostages need to be rescued before going through the blue door. Taking the cloaking device from the catwalk with all the missiles gets me to the hostage door safely, its getting from the hostage room through the blue door that is the nightmare. Those two 90 degree turns are what kills it for the most part, as those are perfect places for fusion hulks to nail you. The two drones in the + shaped catwalk are inconsequential, as they can be sniped with lasers from the hallway between the two catwalks.

And then even if the two turns are made, that big mass of matcen'd fusion bots has an extremely good chance of nailing you between the 2nd turn and the blue door.

The good news is that all you need to do to survive the plasma bot that's in that shaft behind the door is lead with a smart missile. Then all that needs to happen is you need to get to that invulnerability in that little caged area before you get blown up by the missile bots and drillers, which is pretty easy by comparison with running those catwalk gauntlets. Then its killing spree time and the rest of the level should be pretty controllable.

Other problem areas of D1:
-All of level 20 (★■◆● gophers and then roaming missile platforms)
-The reactor area in level 11 (killing all the bomb dropping drones in a timely manner)
-The assorted Red Hulks in the middle of level 13 and the rector room there (altho I may be able to get there on an invuln if I tricord fast enough)
-The matcens near the escape shaft in level 16 (cloaks all over the place help, but I want that invuln behind the driller matcen for the reactor room)
-The lack of an energy center to start level 19 (and the fact that the blue section starts with two red hulks in your face, before you can even sniff the energy center)
-The entire red section of level 23 (trap door red hulks, a fusion hulk in a bad place, and the two redhulks covering eachother in the reactor room)
-The reactor room in level 24 (red hulk hell and I am not sure if there is a cloak or invuln I can use to start that room yet, have not built a route for this leve yet)
-I have hardly examined secret level 3 so I'm just calling that whole level a problem area at this point (cloaked drillers, missile platforms, fusion and red hulks pretty much right off the bat. Screw you, whoever designed that one)
-The reactor room in level 25 (again, no route yet, but I highly doubt there is a cloak or invuln in range)

Everything else in D1 I have at least some idea of how to approach the section.

In the other games, so far I've got a pretty good run of D2 level 1 under the same rules as D1, and I've got decent pure speed runs of D3 levels 1, 2, and 7; and merc level 5. D3's major technical problem is its broken demo system and the fact that it just had to be programmed to do all the menus, mission briefings, and end of level summaries in 640x480 rather than the resolution I want to run the game at when running a level.

Also for D2 and D3, I want more buttons on my joystick, which is why I'd actually been playing some D3 with my Cyborg Evo lately rather than my 3D pro. More buttons would be especially good for D3 considering the cycle secondary system in that game cycles worst to best instead of best to worst like D2, as if I had a couple more buttons I could program my hat to directly select the missiles rather than cycling at all. I also need to get a new keyboard (my good one broke recently) with true N-key rollover so I can hit the 1-5 keys while also trichording. Anyone want to donate $300 bucks for a ps/2 steel series keyboard and a couple new joysticks to try to accomplish those goals? Ha. Or easy to follow instructions on constructing a frankenstick based on the SW 3d Pro would work too.

Sigh. I need more free time to devote to this and more cash to throw at control devices.

Also just to add on to my little note on level 13: Yeah the reactor room could be a very serious problem because I can not use the invulnerability to enter that room unless I pre-clear all the lifters and spiders ahead of time, and that will require too much back tracking. Better to just use that invuln to murder everything guarding the yellow key.

Unless of course there's a fusion cannon hidden somewhere that I don't know about, which I find highly, highly unlikely considering that level 13 is one of my favorite D1 levels. I'll look at it in DLE-XP later. I have found a few alcoves I had no idea existed in a few other levels, so, one never knows.

Regarding level 13 and the reactor room: All I have to do is save the mega missile and all three of the levels smarts for those 3 red hulks and fire them around the corner, starting with the mega to take out the center hulk, and then hitting the smarts on the ceiling in such a way that their plasma globs can hit the remaining 2 off to either side. Further, if only two out of the three die it's not as big of a problem because the one remaining hulk will probably be knocked backwards so far that he'll be on the extreme edge of his firing range and can be picked off with remaining homers, concs, or whatever.

The only consequence is that it makes the rest of the level slightly harder and makes homing missiles slightly more valuable, despite them being given out like candy to begin with. However with good aim, I can take the cloak in the secret stash near the blue key and annihilate 4 red hulks without taking damage, leaving just the three between the energy center with the matcen in it and the other matcen with the one up in it and the invuln in the alcove. The red hulk guarding the yellow key becomes inconsequential when you are invulnerable, packing 20 concs and level 4 quads, and on a rampage.

I'm shooting for around 11 minutes as a preliminary goal for level 13. The one luck based hangup is that I need to get at least one cloak off those 3 cloaked lifters in the room directly ahead of the starting point, but in my many test runs so far that has only happened once. Should not be an issue.

Damn, I commend you Avder. I'm not even thinking about starting to do optimal time runs, or in Doom nomenclature, "UV Max Speedruns." For me the next step would be to simply learn to complete a level with all the robot kills without dying once. In D1 this also includes 3x-ing every matcen. In D2, I don't believe I could be assed to even count, as those matcens spawn indefinitely on Insane ;__;

The reason I'm not 3x'ing every matcen is for consistency across both D1 and D2. I'm also undecided on robots that are hidden away behind doors that only open once the reactor is destroyed, however I have decided that any robot that contains a 1-up must be destroyed, regardless of if its behind a reactor door or not.

Also, I've found a fairly optimized route through level 18, however it will take a long time to run it because of how insanely damaging it is.

Avder wrote:All I have to do is save the mega missile and all three of the levels smarts for those 3 red hulks and fire them around the corner, starting with the mega to take out the center hulk, and then hitting the smarts on the ceiling in such a way that their plasma globs can hit the remaining 2 off to either side.

I think this is best. That center hulk has always been a problem with me because if you don't kill him on one shot then he will often get knocked back and occupy the same cube as the reactor. At that point you are pretty much screwed because you can't hit him anymore. That is one of the more annoying things about Descent reactor rooms with Super Hulks, when they get "stuck."

Avder wrote:All I have to do is save the mega missile and all three of the levels smarts for those 3 red hulks and fire them around the corner, starting with the mega to take out the center hulk, and then hitting the smarts on the ceiling in such a way that their plasma globs can hit the remaining 2 off to either side.

I think this is best. That center hulk has always been a problem with me because if you don't kill him on one shot then he will often get knocked back and occupy the same cube as the reactor. At that point you are pretty much screwed because you can't hit him anymore. That is one of the more annoying things about Descent reactor rooms with Super Hulks, when they get "stuck."

Yeah, that mechanic is exactly why I discovered I have to go with the mega missile first. If I start with the 3 smarts, the center hulk just gets knocked back and then the reactor takes all of the damage. That center hulk has to die first, then the 3 smart missiles can (hopefully) finish off the other two, possibly with one or two homers needed to finish off the left hulk. Then its go in and blast the spiders, blow the reactor and GTFO.

Been toying with level 19 a bit here and there as well, and it has been extremely problematic. The only way I have found to have any chance in the level is to go straight for the quad lasers, then straight for the blue key, and then get at least two cloaks off the cloaked lifters in the area in order to clear out the super bulks just beyond the blue door. And this is just on Ace skill level so far. I have not even started to come up with a plan for coming back to the start section and clearing out all those roaming platform bots, or how to approach the reactor room.

Level 24 is also proving to be rather difficult to create a route for, because like level 9, it has a large open area with a lot of bots that like to roam around. Worse, there are a lot of missile bots in cramped quarters guarding keys, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to save most of the heavy ordinance for the reactor room and its 6 or so red hulks. The good news tho is you get a plasma cannon and fusion cannon right off the bat, and an invulnerability to start the run off with a spree of destruction.

Level 15 is probably going to be pretty easy to do, provided I can make optimal use of the invulns and cloak at start. I think the issue here however is going to be the invuln right next to the exit. The two options with it are to save it for the reactor room and the multiple red hulks inside, or take it and use it to break into the yellow area with its crap ton of brown hulks. Part of the problem with the reactor area in this level isnt just the red hulks in the reactor room itself, but the red hulks in the s-shaped hallway leading to the reactor room. The plan is to blast every hulk between the blue key and energy center while under the influence of the invulnerability in the same area as the blue key itself, however that means the invuln is expiring just as I kill the first red hulk and the two brown hulks guarding the energy center, so to kill the other two without an invuln I need to shoot around corners using lasers, and that takes time. Eh, I'll figure it out.

Level 11 is pretty insane so far. I'll just leave it at that.

Level 16 may not be as hard as I thought it would be. I just need to figure out exactly where every trigger for those matcens near the exit are, and obtain enough cloaks off of lifters.

Xfing wrote:I just watched the famous level 6 vid. Gotta say, you made it look easy. All-keyboard? One would think that sacrificing that pitch speed for accuracy with the mouse isn't favorable in such a run

I use a MS Sidewinder 3D Pro. What made you think I was using something else?

Also I really need to get around to posting the current level 6 vid. I've been eager to show that one off for ages.

Xfing wrote:I just watched the famous level 6 vid. Gotta say, you made it look easy. All-keyboard? One would think that sacrificing that pitch speed for accuracy with the mouse isn't favorable in such a run

I use a MS Sidewinder 3D Pro. What made you think I was using something else?

Also I really need to get around to posting the current level 6 vid. I've been eager to show that one off for ages.

What's keeping you, then?

BTW, check out this guy. He's a whole level below the video you have posted, but still managed to do the level nevertheless. And he played comparatively cautiously, didn't have 100% kills and still it took him 2 minutes more than you. Good way to compare skills.

Xfing wrote:I just watched the famous level 6 vid. Gotta say, you made it look easy. All-keyboard? One would think that sacrificing that pitch speed for accuracy with the mouse isn't favorable in such a run

I use a MS Sidewinder 3D Pro. What made you think I was using something else?

Also I really need to get around to posting the current level 6 vid. I've been eager to show that one off for ages.

What's keeping you, then?

BTW, check out this guy. He's a whole level below the video you have posted, but still managed to do the level nevertheless. And he played comparatively cautiously, didn't have 100% kills and still it took him 2 minutes more than you. Good way to compare skills.

Well I was hoping to have enough of the game done that I could post a level on a regular schedule, say once every other day, so that all 30 levels go up in their playing order.

But I think I'll try to capture that level 6 run I keep talking about. It is considerably better than the one posted.

Plus I still want to try to shave off a few more seconds for the "final" release.

Damn. Your flying is so fluid. I'm having a really hard time trying to fly like that with just the keyboard. Still, I have to say that I attempted your route and time aside, it's been pretty successful. Even though I took plenty of needless damage from the first six C1 Drones, I only died after clearing out like half of the level.

Oh yeah, and the video is an improvement indeed. Puts all other no-death runs to shame even more than your previous one did.

Interestingly, up to the room behind the blue door it seemed like using the cloaking device at the point was a bad decision, you only had like 4 shields left. You did manage to turn it around very nicely, though.

Xfing wrote:Damn. Your flying is so fluid. I'm having a really hard time trying to fly like that with just the keyboard. Still, I have to say that I attempted your route and time aside, it's been pretty successful. Even though I took plenty of needless damage from the first six C1 Drones, I only died after clearing out like half of the level.

Oh yeah, and the video is an improvement indeed. Puts all other no-death runs to shame even more than your previous one did.

Interestingly, up to the room behind the blue door it seemed like using the cloaking device at the point was a bad decision, you only had like 4 shields left. You did manage to turn it around very nicely, though.

The reason I switched the cloak from the yellow door to the blue door was because i realized two things: first, playing the blue door without a cloak requires an entirely too conservative approach, which wastes time and; secondly, if I open the hidden door under the red key and then trichord perfectly, I can get past those drillers with minimal shield loss and then make use of the cloak in the pit. Most of the class one drones will follow down the hole, and then the drillers can be taken out at leisure with homers.

Also you'll notice that I had all of three shields left after I ducked into that pit to get the cloak and extra life. I loved that. I was nervous as hell and living through it was quite a rush.

Also, if I were you I would get one or both of a ps/2 keyboard with n-key rollover and a used 3d-pro off ebay, and then build your own USB adapter. The sidewinder 3d pro is the most accurate joystick I have ever played with. No other joystick has workings even remotely like it.

Altho I do hear some pretty good things about the Thrustmaster T16000M. A lot of flight sim enthusiasts swear by it the same way we all swear by the sidewinder 3d-pro.

Dinking around in Descent 2 for a bit just for fun. If I start working on Descent 2 once I finish with Descent 1, what do you guys think I should do regarding the secret levels? Should I consider them levels in their own right? Make them mandatory segments of a level they are accessed from in the game? Consider them an optional resource? Some combination of those ideas?

I'd been thinking of D2 speedruns as well, but I'd probably just exclude the secret levels because of their setup and only do the standard 24. It just seems hard to regulate otherwise just because of all the quirks of how D2 secret levels are set up, so it's easier to just bypass them for the sake of a speedrun IMO.

I didn't like the D2 secret levels because they didn't feel like cool bonus levels. They felt like multi-player maps crammed into single player levels. I no longer enter them when I play D2 because they make the game drag. Plus the designs tend to clash horribly with the parent level. So if you left them out of your speed runs I would not mind one bit!

I'm thinking it's probably best to treat them as separate levels, just entered differently. The DOS mechanics for recording secret levels seem to imply that that's the only way to go about it anyway. Demo recording automatically ends when exiting a secret level.

Further, Rebirth currently has a bug where demos that transition from a regular level to a secret level terminate upon entry and drop the viewer back to the title screen. I found this out the other day when I tinkered around with SL4 and ran it under my Insane-Max rules. Got a time of about 1:40, but to view the demo I had to load it on Dosbox.

I have reported that glitch on the Rebirth forums. I've also mentioned that I'd like it if demos could be set up to continue recording when transitioning from a secret level to a normal level. I might also request a way for Rebirth demos to track bonuses and other things.

So I'm probably going to treat D2 secrets like I do D1 secrets: clear a path to the levels entrance and then use the exit with my ship in a cold-start configuration. What that means in D1 is clearing a path to the reactor, suiciding, blow the reactor up using only level one lasers, and then take the exit with no powerups. Then save upon materializing in the secret level. In D2 it will mean clearing a path to the teleporter, suiciding, and arriving back at the teleporter with no powerups + exactly 100 shields + exactly 100 energy + 3 concs, and making a save game right in front of the actual teleporter.

All six of the D2 secret levels are doable under my proposed rules for Insane-Max. Secret levels 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 all have enemies to kill, all six have one ups and possibly a full map powerup to collect, and SL 4 has hostages to rescue. For secret level 6 I would be counting each mini-reactor as an enemy. For secret level 3 I would be killing the thief only once and then ignoring the respawns under the "enemies the level starts with" rule.

And for secret level 4, I would need to collect all 7 1-ups, the full map, and the hostages before exiting the level. And to do that with the fastest route, it means using the short-cut near the start of the level that skips to near the end, and then opening the door that leads to the 5 one-ups using a guided missile instead of shooting the well-hidden trigger that shows up around mid-level. And yes, you can open locked grate-type doors with guided missiles. I do it all the time. In fact that's how I open the first door in secret level 4 most of the time when I play through D2, that way I can just take my time and grab all the stuff before I blow the place up. Just have to thread the guided dead center through one of the holes, as grate-doors offer no margin for error unlike regular grates. Not too hard.

Xfing wrote:BTW, do the 4 guys you rescue in SL4 add up to the guys you rescue in the level you arrive from when the bonuses are calculated?

They do not. When you exit the secret level having rescued all the guys in level 14 and all the guys in the secret level I think you have 9 on board? Then when you materialize back in Level 14 you're back to what is it, 4 or 5 from level 14?

Xfing wrote:BTW, do the 4 guys you rescue in SL4 add up to the guys you rescue in the level you arrive from when the bonuses are calculated?

They do not. When you exit the secret level having rescued all the guys in level 14 and all the guys in the secret level I think you have 9 on board? Then when you materialize back in Level 14 you're back to what is it, 4 or 5 from level 14?

To be honest that's how a lot of stuff in D2 is. The Omega Cannon and Phoenix, changes to Spreadfire, Fusion, non-super lasers, the decision to not bring back any robot except the supervisor and *one* cloaked Medium Lifter in level 16, the fact that a lot of D1 robots dont have their correct sounds available for people who want to use them in missions, the fact that both D1 boss 1 and D1 Boss 2 do not have their propler D1 AI's available, the fact that you can hold 20 Shakers with an ammo rack and only 10 megas... etc etc.

Avder wrote:To be honest that's how a lot of stuff in D2 is. The Omega Cannon and Phoenix, changes to Spreadfire, Fusion, non-super lasers, the decision to not bring back any robot except the supervisor and *one* cloaked Medium Lifter in level 16, the fact that a lot of D1 robots dont have their correct sounds available for people who want to use them in missions, the fact that both D1 boss 1 and D1 Boss 2 do not have their propler D1 AI's available, the fact that you can hold 20 Shakers with an ammo rack and only 10 megas... etc etc.

Most of which has already been fixed and will be seen in D1,5 when it's ready